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From The Times
May 9, 2008

Iain Finlayson's non-fiction reviews of the week: May 10, 2008

United States of Hysteria: An Englishwoman's Journey through the Madness of America by Anne Dixey
Monday Books, £7.99 Buy the book here

The wife of a Times correspondent posted to Washington relocates to the upscale 'burbs. She keeps a diary in which nothing much happens to her, her two young daughters or her neighbours. They are aware of noises off - 9/11, anthrax scares, gun crime, weather-related disasters - but the domestic routines of school, shopping, dentistry, vacations etc, continue peacably enough. Dixey herself seems mildly traumatised by her time in an America she found culturally disturbing and frighteningly foreign.

The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden by Katherine Swift
Bloomsbury, £17.99 Buy the book here

In a lovely, lyrical book of hours, book of days, book of years, the story of the Dower House and garden of Morville Hall in Shropshire, which Katherine Swift and her husband leased in 1988, is told in all the rich, meditative detail of an illuminated medieval monastic book of devotion. The Morville garden, a thing of formal beauty in itself, is related to the lives of those who care for it, the past and present communities it served, and the continuity of horticultural history and rural English culture.

How to Build Your Own Spaceship: The Science of Personal Space Travel by Piers Bizony
Portobello, £12.99 Buy the book here

Rocket science is the least difficult element of space exploration: developing the commercial and marketing strategies to make it possible will be the real challenge for space travel investors. As Bizony puts it: “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.” He writes with the easy tone you'd want to hear from your space pilot as he warns you to beware of neutrinos that can cause flashes of light at the back of your eyes and possible muscle atrophy and osteoporosis due to weightlessness. Strap yourselves down, and boldly go on a joyride out of this world.

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